Friday, August 14, 2009

Science + Industry = ... what exactly?

Just look at these serious fellows in the picture below. They must be working on something very important. Just look at them studiously studying that ... big... bubble... er... thing. Their safety glasses tell us that this is dangerous work. That bubbly thing could explode at any moment! How brave to hold it in one's bare hands!

Yes science is an essential part of industry. Why, if the scientists back in 1,000,000 B.C. hadn't done the research of rolling a log down a hill we'd all still be riding on dinosaurs like Alley Oop.

In the critical area of Research and Development, scientists do the research that uncovers new materials and processes, and industry takes those discoveries and develops them into products we can all use.

So its fun to look back half a century and see how industry imagined the world of "the future". A world built on scientific research packaged for a society of consumers -- our world.

Just what did all those R&D dollars give us anyway?

Flying chairs? Nope.

Flying saucers? Nope.

Flying buses? Nope.Beer in cans? Yes!

And let's face it folks, if you've got beer in cans, what else do you really need?

Molecule? Hhhmmmm no Pete, I'm pretty sure its a model of beer foam but... whatever. Incidentally, if you bring all those cans to Ontario you can turn 'em in for ten cents a piece. I can't believe some homeless Saskatchewanian hasn't figured this out!

Tom Palmer sent the following email which he has given me permission to post:

Today's Inspiration really caught my eye, especially the "Philadelphia Electric" multi-panel ad, the large panel and each of the others in the complete ad has the famous model, Steve Holland, posing in them. He's the scientist with glasses in the large detail panel, the guy on the right of the two in front of a panel board, and the guy above a glowing cauldron, etc.

If you don't know already, Steve Holland has to be the most ubiquitous model ever, illustrators used him for men's adventure illustrations, ads, and especially paperbacks, most notably, the Doc Savage series that Jim Bama illustrated. Bama probably used him the most overall and they were good friends. Frank Reilly had him come in to pose for photo shoots when we were doing class projects and he made an enormous professional impression on all of us.

I had the good fortune to use Steve as a model on many occasions in my career and found him to be not only one of the nicest and generous people I've met, but his acting skills that he used in posing made every shot perfect and you could cover a great deal of ground in an one hour session or less. He made a perfect model for Captain America by the way!

Pete; Based on what I've seen of Madmen, if flying saucers had existed back in the day, it would have been perfectly acceptable to pound back a few Rob Roys and Rusty Nails before getting behind the stick! ;^)